


That is the tear of a warrior

by spitzberg_lena



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Kageyama Tobio, Second Year Hinata Shouyou and Kageyama Tobio
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-04-24 18:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19178728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spitzberg_lena/pseuds/spitzberg_lena
Summary: They lost.They fucking lost.And it was because of him.Where Kageyama is hurt during a match.Where Karasuno loses at Nationals.Where there is tears, tears and a lot of tears.





	1. Ballad of the fallen angel

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first fanfic EVER (wow i'm such a newbie) !  
> I'm kinda nervous since English is not my first language but here you go !  
> Enjoy some short (for now) KageHina ugly crying

His vision was still blurry. His head still hurt. Yet a though still passed through his numb mind: _I failed you, all of you. I failed you, Hinata._

The curtains casted shadows all around the room, bringing contrast with the warm light of the infirmary. He knew he needed to wait until the nurse came back to tell him he was okay but he couldn’t. He couldn’t. His teammates were playing an important match and he wasn’t there. _Hinata was playing an important match and he wasn’t there._ As a second year and the official setter of the team, he knew his presence mattered. What an incredible feeling for someone like him. But now, he wasn’t there to help them. He was the missing link in the chain of Karasuno’s volleyball team.

So he ran. He ran, until his feet took him to the main hall of the huge gym dedicated to the Nationals. There was the huge door, wide open, only for him to finally join his friends. He took a single look to the scoreboard before the realization hit him.

_They lost._

_They fucking lost._

_And it was because of him._

He stayed there a moment, so small under the gigantic doorframe. When he finally managed to move from his completely frozen state, it was to roam around the empty field. Where were they? Did they left him ? Was he abandoned...again ? Memories came to his mind but he shaked them away. This time it was different. 

“Where are they?” was the only sentence he could manage, voice so desperate, so cracked, so broken.

“WHERE ARE THEY?” Now he was angry. Angry against himself, against his stupid body, his stupid eye. He was wandering across the hall, shouting out to random people and probably scaring them more than he ever scared anybody. His face was closed, as black as thunder, but if anyone cared enough to look closely at his eyes what they would find would only be an endless sadness.

He found himself going back to the infirmary. Despite the dark scowl the nurse gave him, he gladly took the offer to rest for a bit in the dormitory. At the moment he entered the quiet room, a single tear reached his mouth which he wiped with an angry movement of the thumb. How could water taste so bitter? Chemistry never was his area of expertise.

“Hinata, I’m so sorry”

He cried himself to sleep in the middle of the afternoon.


	2. Infirmary blues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is unbeta'd and English is not my mothertongue so please tell me if there's any mistakes !  
> Enjoyyy

He lied there for what seems hours. It was only minutes but his frustrated and angry mind didn't seem to agree.  
  
Kageyama was not a man of many thoughts, at least not outside a volleyball court. That's why his mind kept short-circuiting, playing the same scene in a painful endless loop.  
  
_Heavy breathing._  
_Smelly sweat._  
  
_The receive is good. Nishinoya is at his best in his third year. Everything seems to go quite well._  
  
_But then..._  
  
_One of the first years tries to pass the ball, trips and ends up sending the ball in his direction, strongly, very strongly._  
  
_Time freezes. Kageyama too._  
  
_He tries to move but it's too late, the ball is already here, already so close to his head, to his eye, what should he do, if he puts his hand his fingers could be crushed by the spinning ball shit it's so cl-_  
  
_The ball hits his left eye._  
_He immediately puts his hand to his eye but he can't seem to feel anything._  
_He keeps blinking his left eye but he can't seem to see anything._  
  
_That's bad. What a dumbass he is._  
  
_The last thing he registers before his mind goes numb is the look on Hinata's face. It's a look he's never seen before, shocked and terribly worried. There is no light anymore in his usually warm brown eyes._  
  
_He will decide after that it is a look he does not like very much._  
  
Shit.  
He shook his head to make the memory go away but that only resulted in increasing his headache.  
Shit. Again.  
  
'I need a distraction. I'll try to think of something I like'  
  
Volleyball was the first answer. All these hours of practice with his teammates, this thrilling sensation when he tossed and Hinata spiked successfully, Hinata, who always trusted him but now...  
  
No no no no. This was not distracting him from his current mental state at all.  
  
Food was the second answer. He thought of milk boxes, of shared meat buns after practice with his teammates and Hina-  
  
Fuck. How and when did his life became so Hinata-centric ?

When he thought about it, he realized it might have been going on for a long time. But he didn't want to think about it. Because now he had let him down.  
  
  
  
  
"You're free to go. You can go back to your hotel room" said the nurse.  
  
Kageyama was not planning to get back to his hotel room at all. That would only get him to face the rejection of his teammates frontly. And he couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear seeing that look of disappointment on Hinata's face.  
  
He opend the infirmary's door while typing the number of his aunt that lived in Tokyo on his phone. He wanted her to pick him up. Anything but being put aside a second time. He could easily quit Karasuno to go to school in Tokyo, far away from his former team, from his former...friends.  
  
But on the other side of the door, Yachi and Ennoshita were waiting for him. And he couldn't avoid them. 


	3. Sympathy for the Captain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is ! Ennoshita might be a little ooc but since we don't know that much about him, I don't really know !  
> Please feel free to leave your critics and maybe some ways I could improve   
> Enjoyyy

Kageyama gritted his teeth and deliberately looked at the floor.

Anger from Ennoshita. Disappointment from Yachi. Maybe disgust too? That’s what he was expecting. The faces from his middle school teammates kept flying before his eyes. History always repeats itself apparently.

His mind tried to from words, to say how much he was guilty of disappointing them, how much he felt guilty. And how he was ready to go back to the bench…or even worse if it meant that those two were the only ones he had to face. He knew he was an important player as the only experienced setter, but the first years were good…and how could you play with a player that was responsible for one of your most memorable loss? He took a deep breath. He was definitely not used to voice his emotions when it was anything else than annoyance towards Tsukishima or pure will.

“I’m sorry.” And “Are you okay?” were heard exactly at the same time.

Kageyama looked up just in time to see his captain’s hand move, patting him on the shoulder.

“Don’t be sorry, volleyball sure is a dangerous sport” Ennoshita said with a chuckle while Yachi was staring at him like she was an inspector examining a corpse.

“Can see you any dark stain in your field of vision? Does your head hurt? Any balance problems? Do you want us to help you to walk? How god you like you have been hit by a truck! Surely we can help you, I’ll go- “

“Yachi-san, the nurse said he was okay, we can go I think. Coach Ukai and Takeda-sensei are eating something with the others but Yachi took food for us, we can go back to the hotel already.”

 

 

The train ride was mostly silent, Kageyama thinking about how he didn’t find any rejection in his captain’s actions. He was looking at the window absently, Yachi next to him eating quietly her sandwich whereas Ennoshita was staring at his meal in front of him. He wanted to ask about Hinata, about how he was coping with the defeat _(god even the word was like a sting in his heart)_ , about how he could make up for it, if he could, about what the redhead was thinking of him now…

Instead, he caught a strange reflection in Ennoshita’s eye. Almost like…water? Was he crying?  

Oh. Right.

It was their senpai’s last game after all. And they lost it. And it was because of him.

His fists clenched at his sides, his jaw muscles contracted and let through an “Captain, I’m…It was your last match. I’m…I’m sorry”. The look Ennoshita gave him was gentle and strong at the same time, the look of an older brother. He didn’t reply immediately, that’s why Kageyama added “I would understand if you were disappointed”. _At me_ , he thought.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am”. That was it. That was the moment he feared, the rest, the coming-to-pick-him-up was just pity for his health condition, he was going to get replaced.

_Dumbass, dumbass Kageyama. Why did you get your hopes up? You’re going to end up in the same situation again, congratulations stupid. You messed up everything again._

But then Ennoshita resumed speaking.

“I’m disappointed at myself because I wasn’t able to be a captain good enough to make his team win. But mostly I am disappointed that we couldn’t play a last game together, all of us, as a team.”

“As a team?” Kageyama was now on the verge of tears, or of one really awful smile, relief and sadness flowing together in his chest.

“That’s what we are, right?”

“Right”

 

 

Yeah. Maybe. Maybe he didn’t have to quit Karasuno after all. Sure he could become the best player of all Japan in another high school but right now, holding a golden medal in his hand didn’t matter as much as seeing it around his teammate’s neck. One teammate in particular, actually.

When he thought about it, history was not repeating itself exactly. If he didn’t play back then, it sucked because he couldn’t win but also it wasn’t him losing. But right now, it meant that Karasuno was losing, that Hinata was losing and he couldn’t accept it.

Team. Yeah, that was it.

Yet right now he didn’t know if it was better like that. That meant more emotional attachment. That meant more pain. His own and that of the other players. Oh did he not see the beautiful chains that strained him. So reassuring sometimes but also so tight.  

But as he left the train and the large silhouette of the hotel loomed over him, he realized he still had to face the person whose trust mattered the most to him. The one who could spike his tosses, the one who had enchained him so easily.

Hinata.


End file.
